The road to the One Laptop Per Child has been riddled with humps and bumps, such as hardware issues, the failure of the 'G1G1' scheme, and the inability to reach the USD 100 price mark, culminating in the resignation of the project's president yesterday. Now, Negroponte, the project's founder and chairman, has stated something that might alienate the project's strongest supporters even further: the OLPC might evolve into using Windows XP only.

Plus I'd say that, as it could be expected for something led by Negroponte, OLPC turned to be the testbed for intestine wars among players involved, a speculation for people willing to get easy money from ignorant governments and another speculation from West to drain money from third-world countries. And that was before Microsoft entered the game.

I wouldn't have been surprised to know that such poor countries should have got expensive loans from IMF and World Bank to buy OLPC machines, typical Capitalist speculation.

Bring them water and energy and they will buy their own computers without any help from greedy westeners who are trying to get even more money from poor countries. Plus, we have literally MILLIONS of PCs which are considered outdated for West standards and which are AVAILABLE NOW to be bought and shipped for ... how much... 20$?

Plus, we have literally MILLIONS of PCs which are considered outdated for West standards and which are AVAILABLE NOW to be bought and shipped for ... how much... 20$?

I kinda agree that just shipping some lower-spec PCs might be more useful in the end. Of course, it's of no use in areas where there isn't electricity, and a laptop is in so many ways more useful in those areas anyway, but still, shipping a few million PCs to the poorer countries for free would still help. In those areas where there is electricity kids would likely start studying those machines, tear them apart and put back together and all that, all those things we do here too. If I just knew where to call and it was guaranteed that the computers did reach poor kids/families I would instantly donate one of my PCs.

I'm sure that if you ask, you will hear about associations which should take care to do that. But I agree: I don't trust most of them. No guarantees that they won't charge money for them or will use them for something else than what they're supposed to do.

I kinda agree that just shipping some lower-spec PCs might be more useful in the end.

I don't think there's a conflict between the two. They serve entirely different groups of people.

Of course, it's of no use in areas where there isn't electricity, and a laptop is in so many ways more useful in those areas anyway,

Bingo!

To me, the most interesting features of the OLPC were/are the hand-crank and the ad-hoc mesh networking. These allow people without access to electrical and telecom infrastructure to gain the biggest (IMHO) benefits of computers (i.e. document creation/storage and communication) without reliance on government and/or corporate support. I consider this to be very important.

but still, shipping a few million PCs to the poorer countries for free would still help. In those areas where there is electricity kids would likely start studying those machines, tear them apart and put back together and all that, all those things we do here too. If I just knew where to call and it was guaranteed that the computers did reach poor kids/families I would instantly donate one of my PCs.

OLPC should have 2 choices OS, Windows or Mac OSX. Linux sucks. This is the only thing Open Source can't do a good job with is OS. They talk talk how bad Vista is, at less you don't have jump through hoops to do simple thing.